And Her Hair Went With Her
by Ms. Virago
Summary: The story of a fourteen year old Iranian girl, rescued from her execution by a chilling discovery. Odd, abandoned and dangerous, Tirajeh Nasr is taken to the only place that can house those like her.
1. Chapter 1

Notes: Feedback, especially criticism, is the most powerful tool in a writer's arsenal. Thanks, as always, for reading.

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And Her Hair Went With Her

by Ms. Virago

1:

It would be the last public stoning of a woman in the village of Rashemi, two hundred miles southeast of Tehran, the solid, craggy heart of Iran. Solemnly, fathers, sons and brothers lined a dusty pit with palms and fingers tightly wound around thick chunks of stone. It would be the last time a father, with an impossibly strong arm wrapped uncompromisingly around his daughter's shoulders, would guide his offspring to the edge of the shallow ditch.

Her family name was Nasr, but her first name, the name her father had made a golden word as he whispered it into her mother's ear four minutes after she was born, the name her mother snapped at her like a whip when she caught her playing outside as a child with no headscarf wrapped around her head, the name the first boy she might have loved sighed into her ear as they made love for the first time in a kitchen closet at a gathering of families, the name her father had whispered when he had walked in on them making love for the third time, in a bed, letters falling with the finality of iron on the floor, with such disappointment, with such fear, with such mortality, was Tirajeh.

Mothers, sisters and daughters had no part in this circle, unless they were at the bleeding heart of it. Her mother and sister were clutched together inside a tightly sealed house streets, blocks and miles away. Their tears streaked their faces, like rain that streamed down the sides of tin houses. There was no rain today, only a hot fistful of sun raising its arm with vindication into the cloudless sky. Her shoed toes teetered dangerously on the edge of the pit; with a breath and thin, gentle fingertips at her back, her father nudged her into the deep circle, his last act of kindness.

She stepped in, determined not to lose her balance as her feet shuffled to the bowl of the ditch. Her arms snaked around her fettered body like rope, attempting to quell the trembling of her every muscle. In the precious moments before her entrance into the pit, she had made solemn promises to her young, fourteen-year-old self that she would die quietly and with great dignity. Had she known anything about dying, or perhaps even what it is like to die by the stones, she would have known better. But this is what she was supposed to learn, she had realized, she should have known better. A pity she would not have the opportunity to know better, instead of this anguished punishment of what she had and had not known.

And here she was, living the penultimate moment of her life at fourteen and cowering at the bottom of a shallow pit. As words began to be read by a man she could not see, it seemed that every pore in her body opened in a scream. Sobs wrenched from her throat, thick, salty tears poured from her eyes and snot dribbled from her nose. Her mind flew like a bird to a thousand different places—to her mother, who had always taught her as well as she could, to her father, standing stoically with stones in his big hands, to Ghassan, the boy she was dying for, and to her sister, her beautiful sister, who had always taken Tirajeh's thick, unruly hair and attempted to braid it into thick rope.

The voice stopped speaking. She heard the shifting of men's feet.

A stone, out of nowhere, flew from the circle, bouncing off the bone of her shoulder and landing on the ground with an anti-climactic softness. She cried out, her lips attempting to stop her vocalizations, and then began to hyperventilate as another stone snapped into her back. Then, a flurry of stones barraged her as her knees gave way and she crouched like the child she was, her hands covering her head.

Ghassan's face was in her head. Where was he? Was he casting stones? Her sister's face now. Who would take care of her? Would she be all right? Her mother's smile, bright as sunshine as she combed Tirajeh's unruly hair. Then, all images dissolved into the sobbing mantra: I don't want to die, not today, not today, not today…

Her scalp began to burn as though each strand of her hair was a brand. A thick stone nailed her skull in the back of the head—she almost lost consciousness, and she fell onto her hands and knees in the dirt. And then it happened—in that brief, teetering moment between the conscious and the unconscious, between life and death, the dark rage of her soul took flight.

Her hair ripped from her scalp, tearing through the thin fabric of her headscarf, growing and twisting like a snake falling through the air, like vipers uncoiling from their hiding spots in the dirt. Black, thick, prehensile vines shot out of her head, fast as lightning, to snatch flying stones from the air. They released their holdings, the stones falling lifelessly, harmlessly, to the dirt. Tirajeh's eyes were half-lidded, only knowing half of what was occurring around her. The cries from the men surrounding her were thick with fear.

Like swords, every strand of hair from her head tightened and sharpened, each thick length of it rising to each man's throat. It glinted vindictively in the sun. Her executioners staggered back, and the hair followed.

The hair pulsed, drawing back like a viper ready to strike. And then, time stopped.

A fuzzy, gauzy strength surrounded every fiber of her being. Her hair shuddered before losing its form, falling limply to the dirt, retreating slowly back into her head. Tirajeh's scalp burned as though it were on fire, her body trembling as though she were encased in ice. She collapsed to the ground.

A man with thick, red eyes was leaning over her. For some reason, she felt no fear before she felt herself slip, slip, and was gone.

The men surrounding them—a red-eyed man, a tall woman with red hair and woman with astonishing white hair—raised their fists full of stones again.

The red-eyed man picked up Tirajeh carefully. Stones flew. They stopped in mid-air, suspended as though floating in water, before dropping to the ground.

"Ours," said the white-haired woman as the three took Tirajeh to a plane that seemed to appear out of nothing but air. And then they were gone.


	2. Chapter 2

Notes: Thanks for the feedback and for reading. Keep letting me know what you think. I really appreciate any input, positive or otherwise.

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And Her Hair Went With Her

by Ms. Virago

2:

The jet cruised as silently as a cloud through the sky over the Atlantic, far away from the town two hundred miles southeast of Iran. Tirajeh was draped in a tall, metal seat in the second row of the plane, strapped in securely. Jean Grey, the psychic who had stopped the stones in the air with invisible hands, knelt next to the girl, a medical kit open at her feet. Her red hair was bound back in a ponytail, and her long fingers cleaned a deep gash on the Arab girl's forearm.

Ororo Munroe, called Storm, turned from the co-pilot's seat, her long white hair tied up tightly in a bun. Her deep eyes looked Tirajeh up and down.

"They get younger every time," the weather witch said, her voice soft as her eyes rested on the shredded headscarf clenched uncompromisingly in the young girl's fists. Jean's long fingers gently touched Tirajeh's hands.

"Prehensile hair," she said. Her fingertips felt a shred of the headscarf Tirajeh had been bound to wear to cover her hair. "Ironic."

"But it turned…sharp," said the man with the red eyes, Scott Summers, the Cyclops. "Like blades. Spears. Something."

Jean touched the unruly black hair that spilled out over the young girl's shoulders. It was flat, dormant, lifeless—normal. "Perhaps it's akin to mutants who can extend certain parts of their skeletal system, making the bones harder, denser, sharper. More lethal," she murmured, half as an answer and half as the musings of an interested researcher looking over a subject.

Ororo sighed. "All I know is that she'll have a hell of a lot to deal with on top of coming into her abilities. Did you give her some sedative?"

Jean took a gray wool blanket from a compartment above their heads and draped it over the young girl. "She'll be out for the rest of the ride and then some. I wish I didn't have to, but if her subconscious senses a threat…there's a lot of hairs on that head, if you know what I mean," she said desert-dry humor.

She took her place in the tall metal seat behind Scott's, buckling herself in after making sure Tirajeh was secure. There was a soft ringing noise from the control panel of the jet.

"We're entering U.S. airspace," said Storm.

…

Tirajeh's eyes felt as though they were covered with stone. Her eyelids were stiff and heavy as she propped herself up on an elbow, rubbing her eyes with a small fist.

When she managed her eyes open, she sat up in a plain, soft, white bed. The room's walls and carpeting were a neutral color---more of an off-white, creamy beige color. It made the room seem much less bare. There was a small wooden desk in the corner, with a neatly scooted in chair. A thin, clear vase held a few handfuls of water and a couple of brightly colored blooms. There was one window, although it didn't seem as though you could open or close it. Was it a cell? If so, her keepers certainly had her comfort in mind.

Her limbs felt strangely heavy, as though she had thick iron weights strapped to her legs and elbows. She took a deep breath, silently asked the question _Where am I?_

Then—her memories, savagely unleashed by the drug's ebbing, slammed into her like a hundred hammers.

Like a hundred stones.

_Why am I not dead?_ She would have slapped herself if moving wasn't such a chore at this point. _Where are Baba and the others? What happened? _A soft, keening cry rose from deep in her throat and her fists clenched. Despair and confusion made her vision blurry, and the hairs on the back of her neck raised straight up. Her scalp began to burn—

Then the door opened, and a red-haired woman in a white coat entered, pocketing her black, square-framed glasses and carrying a clipboard with several sheets of paper.

"Tih-_rah_-zjeh?" she said very slowly, with not a hint of condescension. Tirajeh nodded. Jean slowly moved to the other side of the room after closing the door, her psychic senses heightened as to the agitated state of the mutant girl. She took the chair from the desk and very deliberately wheeled it to the side of Tirajeh's bed, where she sat, a leg crossed over the other.

"My name is Dr. Grey. Do you speak English?" Every syllable was deliberate.

Tirajeh's vision came back into focus, as did her mind. As she slowly breathed, she nodded. "Some," she whispered, her voice scratchy and ragged.

Dr. Grey brightened a bit—that would make her transition at least a little easier. No one had been sure whether or not she could speak English.

"Where am I?" managed Tirajeh, wobbling a bit. Her pillows gently bunched at her back, propping the Arab girl up, immediately.

"The Xavier Institute for Higher Learning. A school for young people," supplied Jean.

"Why?" said Tirajeh, a bit alarmed and disoriented by the sudden movement of the pillows.

"Because…you're like us. A mutant," Jean said carefully, watching the girl closely for any signs of flaring emotion.

Instead, she was met with simple translation confusion. "Mu…what?"

After a moment of thought, Jean tried to put it delicately: "You have…abilities. Special abilities. They make you different from others."

When Tirajeh still looked confused, Jean raised a hand and the pen that had been resting on her clipboard floated into the air above their heads. It twirled around once or twice before Jean set it down next to Tirajeh's hand on the bed.

Instead of yelping or flailing, Tirajeh simply took in a sharp breath of air and stood stone still while the pen moved. Every hair on her body felt as though it was standing on end.

And it was. The hair that piled on Tirajeh's hair had risen, gathering to the top of her head like a black, nervous crown. Like a viper waiting for its enemy to make the next move. It was ready.

"Shh," said Jean. "I'm not going to hurt you. You're okay." Her hand moved with purpose to grasp Tirajeh's, letting the sheen of her power spread from the tips of the Arab girl's fingers to the top of her scalp. The hair calmed. Jean always thought she was lucky when she encountered such raw and unused power—it was easier for her to take hold of it.

Tirajeh's deep brown eyes were as wide as saucers. She reached up with her free hand to grasp a lock of hair in shock, in utter realization but complete confusion. Before Jean could react, she was yanked into a memory:

_Tirajeh was eight, and her sister had spilled glue in her hair. Tirajeh had been picking up scraps of weaving yarn from under the table, and her six year old sister had knocked over a pot of paste onto her head. It was typical. After countless tears, Tirajeh was gently led to a stool in front of the fire by her gentle mother, who readied the shears. As she began to snip at the long, black hair—the cut strands began to bleed. Pain seared through Tirajeh's head, running from her scalp into her eyes, down her face, throat, into her chest, streaming through her arms and legs to the very tips of her fingers and toes. The hair thickened defensively as Tirajeh's mother kept on cutting, thinking the faster she did it the faster it would be over. Tirajeh, unable to bear the intense strain on her rather feeble child's pain threshold, shrieked and tried to get away. Her mother, yelling at her to hold still, that this had to be done right now, as thin dribbles of blood dripped down the back of her neck---it was too much, and the dense pain screamed at her from within, as though her limbs were being trimmed by slow knives. She yanked away from her, getting up and running like hell, her mother chasing her up the stairs with the scissors, screaming half out of frustration and half out of miserable horror at this defect of her child, "Get back! Get back here now!"_

As Jean was thrust out of the memory, Tirajeh's dark eyes bored into hers. The Arab girl's hands were trembling slightly from the vividness of the memory—she sensed (somehow, though she couldn't quite explain why) that Dr. Grey had experienced it too, and that her presence had made the memory so…alive.

"We did not cut it anymore after that," she said quietly, in a voice ragged from the past day's trauma.

"You are safe here," said Jean firmly, squeezing her hand quickly before removing it. "I promise it. You're safe."

On some level, Tirajeh could believe her.


End file.
